Generally, in the field of wireless communication it is known that wireless communication applications comprise at least a wireless communication unit and an application control unit. Such wireless communication applications are in particular mobile handsets, tracking & tracing devices, car entertainment units, metering devices or similar devices.
The application control unit and the wireless communication unit according to the prior art are communicating via a command interface which allows sending of instructions from the application control unit to the wireless communication unit. The command interface is preferably an AT-interface, a quasi-standard for controlling modems which is implementing the Hayes command set. In particular such wireless communication units are built by so-called machine-to-machine (M2M) modules, which are units comprising practically all necessary components for enabling the wireless communication application to conduct wireless communication.
In recent developments said wireless communication units are more and more equipped with an internal operating platform accessible for the manufacturers of wireless communication applications. This operating platform allows controlling the wireless communication unit by software entities executed on that internal operating platform inside the wireless communication unit. This is advantageous as it reliefs the wireless communication application from tasks running on its own application control unit, by using the processor resources on-board of the wireless communication unit. This saves processor resources on the application control unit and allows easier maintenance of the control software.
Main disadvantage of this development is that for the application manufacturer it is cumbersome to allow controlling the software entities running on the internal operating platform from the application control unit. In particular advanced implementations might require interaction with the application control unit, which is by now not foreseen. This results effectively in a decision for the application manufacturer, if the wireless communication unit is controlled by the application control unit or by a software unit running on the internal operating platform.
Further disadvantageous is that by now there is no possibility to modify the command set of the command interface of the wireless communication unit, be it by adding new commands and/or changing the behavior of existing commands, in particular completely removing the functionality of a command.
It is therefore the goal of present invention to overcome the mentioned disadvantages and to propose a solution for an improved control of the wireless communication unit.
Further alternative and advantageous solutions would, accordingly, be desirable in the art.